The Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet (50th Anniversary Edition)

ABKCO

I’ve always fucking hated The Beatles and I know that our Ma once said, in a louche fashion, that she preferred The Rolling Stones in the ’60s. I’m going to assume that was because of the better tunes and, like, generally being nicer to look at. She’s not really a one for your rock stuff, our Ma, so it’s as close to glowing praise for a group that’s not from the auld country or from Nashville’s golden age as you’ll find.

So this is kind of a curio for me because I’ve never particularly bothered with much of this kind of “canon”. Usually whenever I do it’s something like The Beatles (shit) or The Doors (shit) or Led Zep (shit, and dodgy) or Bob Dylan (shit). Didn’t bode well here. I’m not sure if I’m coming to this record fresh — when something’s as well-heeled as this you kind of know it already — but it’s a banger. As I type this the very talented photographer Agata Urbaniak is boogying across the room to it.

Something that’s nice about rock music is when it thinks a bit about what it’s doing. Do we need a guitar all throughout the track? Probably not. So “Sympathy For The Devil” has it sparingly. That’s nice. It would be wrong of me to decry it just because Primal Scream are, by and large, shit. And I am definitely not a one for being unreasonable.

It’s not clever, you see? It feels more in tune with something like The Kinks (who I do quite like) or anything else that was pop. Pop that’s not afraid to pop. Sandie Shaw and all that. Unencumbered by the drivelling twat of “serious music fans”. There’s plenty of super-obvious borrowings — country, blues, gospel, folk, some vestigial skifflisms — but… well, here’s the thing right: I liked that Mark E Smith always referred to The Fall as a group and not a band. There’s something about the term “band” that implies all that Beatles (to repeat, shit), Doors (again, shit), Led Zep (dodgy, who were also shit), Bob Dylan (still shit) shit that’s shit and bandlike and immediately brings to mind being stamped on by shoes with pictures of boring guitars, forever. The Stones — if I might be so personal with a band I’ve not known that long — feel like a group.

There’s some silly voices on here. Some decently inauthentic American accents (“Dear Doctor”). It’s not the borrowing from old blues guys that bothers me with a lot of this stuff, it’s the aching austerity for a genre that was mostly about dancing, fucking and wearing better shoes than the other dancing, fucking people. The ole Stonies seem to have got the lick of sounding like they’ve bought a half-decent pair of rug-cutting shoes in their glass-cutting cheekbone days.

I mean, I do find it genuinely peculiar that this remains super popular, and it’s a pretty stripped back, loose and fun sounding recording — “Prodigal Son” is well album track, “Factory Girls”‘ hoedownisms are well cute — but who am I to stand in the way of progress? Good luck, the Roll-e-os, and long may you rock.

Double bonus: it being an anniversary re-issue, there’s only two bolt-ons — a mono mix of “Sympathy”… and a telephone interview. You’re not well if you care about either.

-Kev Nickells-